Mehreen Faruqi (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak about the Paid Parental Leave Amendment (Improvements for Families and Gender Equality) Bill 2022 and associate myself with the excellent observations made by my colleagues Senator Waters and Senator Barbara Pocock. This bill aims to improve the Paid Parental Leave scheme by making it more flexible, accessible and gender neutral.

Currently, Australia has one of the weakest parental leave schemes in the OECD, in terms of both rates of pay and the length of paid leave. With this bill, things will definitely improve, but we still won't meet international best practice. Increasing the availability of leave from 18 to 26 weeks is an important step forward in ensuring parents are adequately supported in the crucial first few months of parenthood. But why do people have to wait for another three years to get the 26-week entitlement? This should come much sooner, and we should be moving to 52 weeks of paid parental leave quickly, as well. As my colleague Senator Waters has said, there is no reason to delay the implementation of good policy.

This bill does introduce measures to increase flexibility in how and when paid parental leave can be taken, which will allow families to juggle their work and care responsibilities a little better. But, to be truly effective, the scheme should really be complemented by other reforms to support flexible work. That means universal and free early childhood education and care. High-quality early childhood education and care can give children the best start in life, and it is a critical component of lifelong learning. It will enable women to pursue career opportunities and ensure they aren't held back because this essential service is too expensive or is not available.

Time out of the workforce and taking on more unpaid labour has significantly contributed to the gender pay gap in superannuation as well. By failing to pay super on parental leave, the government is increasing the risk that certain parents, particularly women, will retire into poverty. Women of colour are even further impacted because they tend to have significantly lower rates of workforce participation and are generally overrepresented in low-paid and insecure work. The Greens also support full wage replacement. Paying parental leave at the minimum wage is insufficient and discourages men, who are often higher paid, from taking parental leave. My colleagues Senator Waters and Senator Barbara Pocock will be moving amendments to fix some of these shortcomings of the government's Paid Parental Leave scheme.

I will turn now to a cohort of people who often fall through the cracks: PhD students. A key shortcoming of this bill is that PhD students are not included in the Paid Parental Leave scheme. Despite often conducting research on a full-time basis, they cannot access the same parental leave entitlements as other working parents. I will be introducing amendments to fix this. Currently, PhD students do not qualify for the scheme, as their activity is counted as study through a scholarship or other award of financial aid and therefore fails the test in the current Paid Parental Leave Act. I can think of no good rationale for excluding PhD students. As a PhD student who, years ago, had a baby while doing research and as a former academic who is passionate about the importance and necessity of research and supporting researchers, this matter is very close to my heart.

PhD students are currently eligible for a stipend from their university through the government's Research Training Program. However, the stipend is a measly $29,863, well below the minimum wage. Universities have the option to top this amount up, but data on 189 universities shows that only 42 of them offer above the government's stipend, and none of them meet the minimum wage. In response to a written question on notice asked by Senator Waters during the Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee's inquiry into the bill, the Department of Social Services advised:

The Paid Parental Leave scheme is intended to support working parents who have demonstrated an attachment to the workforce.

The department said:

Should a PhD student undertake paid work in addition to their studies, such as tutoring at a university, this could count towards the work test.

This is completely unreasonable. It is unfair to expect that every PhD student in Australia have the opportunity to get paid work and the time to commit to this work while they are studying full-time. That is atrocious.

PhD students are struggling. They are struggling to make ends meet amidst the cost-of-living crisis and rising rents. In January this year the Guardian reported that PhD students are barely scraping by, often relying on a partner to survive or being forced to eat instant noodles and work extra jobs during the night. We need to lift government support for PhD students. We must ensure that they are not put off pursuing higher education because of the high cost of living and the lack of entitlements. We need to increase the stipend, and here today we have the opportunity to actually include PhD students in the Paid Parental Leave scheme.

I urge my Senate colleagues to support the Greens amendments to expand the eligibility of the Paid Parental Leave scheme to PhD students. This amendment does so by including a new entitlement to paid parental leave for someone doing eligible postgraduate work. A person performs eligible postgraduate work if the person is enrolled in a course of study or research for a doctoral degree and performs study or research for the purposes of that course, whether the enrolment is within an institution or the study or research is performed within or outside Australia. These amendments expand the work test in the Paid Parental Leave Act to include eligible postgraduate work.

In November last year, the Minister for Social Services told parliament that this bill reflects the government's commitment to deliver better outcomes for families and advance women's economic participation. Minister Rishworth also said that Australians need a paid parental leave scheme that reflects the needs of modern families. If Labor is serious about achieving gender equity for all, and promoting the health and wellbeing of all parents and children in Australia, it must extend this scheme to postgraduate students. Anything less will be a pretty cruel oversight by the government.

Changes to improve paid parental leave and make it more equitable have been a long time coming. Women, women's organisations, women's rights activists, unions, families and economists have been pushing for this for ages. Discrimination against women at work in the form of diminished responsibilities and lower wages still continues. Improvements to paid parental leave as presented in this bill will, hopefully, help create more equitable workplaces and less disadvantage for women and improve the sharing of care between parents.

It is really time to move beyond incrementalism. That is quite apparent in this bill. It is time to make the changes that we need, in leaps and bounds. Women, parents and families do deserve more. They shouldn't have to wait years more for fairness and equity. We've waited far too long already.